The Greens climate plan

This Green Party discussion paper shows that we can reduce New Zealand’s net annual greenhouse gas emissions to no more than 40 Mt of CO2-equivalent by 2030, even if there was a five year transition period for the farming industry. This is an emissions reduction of at least 40 percent below the 1990 gross emissions level and would put us broadly on a straight-line path to being climate neutral (zero net emissions) by 2050.

Now in 2013, our greenhouse gas emissions were 81 Mt, so this is a 50% reduction in just 15 years. I’m not sure there is a country on Earth that has managed that. But let’s look at the details of how they say it can be done.

Firstly they seem to be comparing apples and oranges, which is very misleading. They are talking a net 40 Mt in 2030 compared to a gross 67 in 1990. The net in 1990 was 38,000 according to our official inventory.

So how do they say they will reduce 28 Mt. The break down is:

Agriculture 2.2

Industrial Processes 2.1

Other fossil fuel burning 3.7

Waste 3.6

Transport 7.7

Electricity 4.8

Forestry 4.0

Let’s look at each in turn:

Agriculture – 2.2 reduction out of 31.7 – 7% decrease

Industrial Processes – 2.1 reduction out of 5.1 – 41% decrease

Waste – 3.6 out of 5.1 – 71% decrease

Electricity – 4.8 out of 5.0 – 96% decrease

Transport – 7.7 out of 12.7 – 61% decrease

Forestry – 4.0 more on top of 26.7 – 15% increase

I don’t think we can or ever should be 100% renewable as that threatens security of supply. We’re 80% renewable and could see us getting to 95% or so.

The transport scenario is pie in the sky. It is based on 100% of new cars sold by 2030 being electric cars. I’m a fan of electric cars but no sensible Government would ever make a commitment that they will basically ban new non-electric cars within 15 years.

Also not very realistic is saying we’ll save 2.8 Mt a year from biofuels. for the transport sector. The last time biofuels were subsidised to promote them, it led to mass starvation as arable land was converted to biofuels.

The agricultural policy is based on 2,400 farms reducing their dairy herd by 75 cows each or a 15% reduction.

The forestry increase would require 50,000 to 100,000 hectares of land to have pine forest planted on them – every year. This would mean a reduction in farming of that many hectares every year. Wouldn’t want to be a farmer as the Government takes your land off you to plant pine trees on!

Credit to the Greens for having a reasonably detailed plan, and they have shown how we could have a more ambitious target than the current one. However while some aspects of their plan are practical, other aspects are ludicrous – such as the assumption there will be no new petrol cars within 15 years.

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Comments (103)

Meatloaf

LizS, first things first, if you go with the one child policy, the population will shrink. My brother and I had a debate about climate change although we didn’t agree, we both agreed, that the population has the biggest effect, but he also said most people have only two children anyway.
Now about that the working for families package was set at 3 to start off with. Then the Maori Party changed it to 6. And the Greens said it stopping at 6 is discrimination to the child.

So my point being, if we drastically reduced working for families down to 2, this in itself would mean the population would about stay the same, the Greens are obvious wimps. The working for families package makes a huge difference. Next thing, your shoelaces are made in 31 different countries, this is called intertrade. Why are we buying goods that travel all over the world? And how about putting a label on imported goods, to say whether they are shipfreighted or airfreighted. Shipfreighted goods cause less pollution than airfreighted. Inter trade and international trade are 31% of people made pollution. I’m not saying no trade, just pointing out that simple little things can make a difference. Do you hear the Greens talk about this. All they can talk about is less electricity usage. These greens have ‘strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel’, that’s what I think of them.

LizS

Population change has a long lead-time and I understand is ultimately trending down globally by choice anyway – and could reduce faster if we supplied the unmet demand for free easily available family planning support in NZ and globally. I think there’s plenty we could do before needing to resort to population control coercion.

Given we’ve only got years to act, not decades, we also need to shrink the footprint of the existing NZ population. I agree with you about reducing consumption. The UN Climate Summit looks at emissions in terms of production which is why the Greens plan will be focusing on NZ’s production emissions, but we need to reduce both production and consumption emissions. And expect that the rest of the world will look at reducing their consumption emissions too.

A Transition Towns advisor once suggested with trade in crackers between NZ and Aussie, that it would be easier and better for our planet, just to swap recipes.

Meatloaf

LizS, this is why I love to give the Greens a hard time. First of all I’m not saying no trade. According to Al Gore’s hockey stick, Global Warming took off starting in the 70s. This is compatible with Dr Ravi Batra’s book where the final chapter he talked about the environment. According to Dr Batra, we didn’t have global warming problems till trade and inter trade exploded. Up till then, countries were importing mildly, their was no global warming problem. In his book he showed that the higher tariffs were, the lower income tax was. And showed that over decades. And then in the final chapter he mentioned the environment.

Now I’m not advocating tariffs, but actually I’m talking about true free trade. True free trade means exports equal imports, that was what David Hume argued for. And one of the aspects of free trade is that according to Gareth Morgan in ‘after the panic’ NZ has the third lowest capital intensity in the OECD, and Germany has double what we have. So its like saying Germans use petrol mowers, and we use push mowers. A German can get double per hour, because their machinery is twice as fast. Germans get a higher wage. So my point being more capital intensity would mean we could actually competitevely (sorry my spelling) be able to make shoelaces at a lower price then these other people. This would save the earth, by less imports. Again it would be by us producing things at a more competitive price. Now this environmental tax we’ve paid is less money for us to spend on capital intensity. So its actually making the problem worse.

So my solution, no more environmental tax, on condition that the money saved goes to our capital intensity, as this in itself would make a difference, and 2ndly less working for families. An example of my arguement is that currently we take things out of the ground and send it to China to be processed, and then it gets sent back, because we don’t have the equipment necessary to competitively do it ourselves. Or to put it another way, the Green’s way of measuring things is fundamentally flawed and not helping.